STANFORD -- Ask John Bravman whether he prefers doing research to
teaching students, or serving on a faculty committee to looking over his
research budgets, and he won't know how to answer.

For Bravman, a recently tenured associate professor in the department of
materials science and engineering at Stanford University, the question is
moot.

"Virtually everything I do is related in some way to the education of our
students," he said.

Whether he's lecturing to 90 undergraduates, or conferring with one
graduate on his dissertation, or chairing a subcommittee, Bravman stays
focused on his mission of educating students.

A career in higher education was not always what Bravman intended. After
completing his own education at Stanford (bachelor's in 1979, doctorate in
1984), he had offers to work in large corporate research labs and with a
small start-up company. He also interviewed for a new faculty position in
materials science, and was quite surprised when it was offered to him.

Because he hadn't focused his graduate career on becoming an academic,
Bravman had to do some serious soul- searching. He had never been a teaching
assistant, and had given only a few lectures or demonstrations. Nonetheless,
he said, "I knew this might be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."

The change was a bit of a shock at first.

"It was like, one day I was a graduate student and the next day I put on a
tie and I was on the faculty," he said. "I was the same person, but they
started calling me Dr. Bravman instead of John. It was strange for a while."

Bravman quickly "decided to put time and energy into developing proper
teaching style." It wasn't unusual for him to spend eight to 12 hours to
prepare a 50-minute lecture. In his first years teaching, he put in hundreds
of hours making drawings and developing charts and graphs, as well as writing
research proposals.

He worked on his personal style as well, trying to make his lectures
stimulating. He teaches an introductory materials science class, which
students take to fulfill a distribution requirement; a required graduate
course in crystallography, which, he said, "to most people is as dry as
sand"; and some upper-level graduate courses.

No matter what the level of instruction, he discovered he would "rather
cover less material well than more material poorly. Rushing a lecture always
ends up being a mistake."

His students felt the payoff, and recognition came quickly. He was named
the School of Engineering's Distinguished Adviser in 1987, and received the
Excellence in Teaching Award from the Society of Black Scientists and
Engineers in 1988 and the university's highest honor for excellence in
teaching, the Walter J. Gores Award, in 1990.

In addition, he picked up the Tau Beta Pi Award for Excellence in
Undergraduate Engineering Teaching in 1990 and the American Society for
Metals' Bradley Stoughton Award for Young Teachers in 1991.

At the same time, he continued his research in thin-film materials. Today
he manages contracts worth three-quarters of a million dollars, working with
nine graduate students and a postdoctoral fellow on five projects.

The attraction for him is not in building widgits, but in understanding
basic properties.

"Materials science is understanding the relationships between the way you
process a material, the structure you create in the material and the
properties which that structure makes the material have," he said.

Applications for thin-film materials can be found in fields as
far-reaching as high-speed electronics, optical data storage and hard surface
coatings. Some of his work is in superconducting materials, a class of
materials that has no electrical resistance below a certain temperature.

"Materials science will remain one of the most technologically important
fields for the foreseeable future, along with computer science and
biotechnology," he said.

Although Bravman has 65 publications on his resume, he said he doesn't
spend much time in the lab anymore. "I have very bright students," he said.
"You try to direct them in an intelligent way, but it's the students who do
the lab work."

From the beginning, Bravman has been heavily involved with both
administration, professional organizations and faculty committees. Beginning
in September he'll be associate chairman of his department. He was also
elected to a three-year term on the executive council of the national
Materials Research Society. He's up for election as vice president of that
organization.

He has served on committees devoted to everything from Student Faculty
Liaison to Space and Building. He chairs the department's Computer, Building
and Space, and Financial Aids committees.

As an award-winning teacher, Bravman is well aware of the costs involved
in balancing his teaching and research responsibilities with his
administrative work.

"There's a real tension at the university because we tend to put faculty
into many kinds of administrative roles and they're not necessarily the best
pool to draw from for those tasks, not so much through (lack of) talent and
ability, but through (lack of) desire," he said.

"That creates a basic problem because it draws faculty away from what they
do best, teaching and research. I don't know how to solve that problem."

One solution is to rotate faculty into administrative positions, but,
Bravman said, that has its own limitations. It's one thing to go back to
teaching after a five-year break, but quite another to start up a new funded
research program and to have remained on top of one's field scientifically.

"As soon as you get into one of those high-level jobs, you are probably
making a decision to change your career, or you're taking an awful big risk
if you think you can get back to being a regular faculty member," he said.

While Bravman hasn't ruled out an administrative job in future, it is
teaching that holds him now. "I would hate to give up the day-to-day
involvement I have with students so that would make it a very difficult
choice," he said.

"The best thing about this job is when you take a student from ignorance
to understanding. I think service to other people is what we're called to do,
and I try to do it through education. I'm fortunate to be here, so I'm going
to make the most of it."

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